A child who increases the time spent compulsively on social networks tends to show more symptoms of ADHD a year later. Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco found this in a follow-up study 11,286 American teenagers for five years, from approximately 12 to 16 years of age. The report, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, does not work in the opposite direction: the symptoms of inattention do not anticipate the increase in problematic use of social media.
The team led by pediatrician Jason Nagata cross-referenced five annual surveys collected between 2017 and 2023. On the one hand the children’s responses on their relationship with social media (recurring thoughts on the platform, failed attempts to reduce its use, the need to take refuge online to escape problems), on the other the parents’ assessments of their children’s attention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
The numbers emerging from the statistical model are modest but consistent over time. Between the fourth and fifth year of the survey, the increase in compulsive use of social media predicted an increase in ADHD symptoms with a coefficient of 0.08 (95% confidence interval between 0.03 and 0.12), and the value remains identical in the next step. The reverse path, from ADHD symptoms to the use of social media, produces a lower coefficient (0.04) and is not confirmed in the following survey.
The effect affects almost only males
Separating the data by sex, the association between compulsive use of social media and ADHD symptoms is significant only among boys: 0.11 in the transition between the fourth and fifth year, 0.07 in the next one. In girls the same statistical link is not confirmed in either of the two time windows analyzed.
Nagata links this to a greater male sensitivity to immediate reward typical of adolescence. “Social platforms encourage continuous switching from one task to another and offer a constant flow of stimuli,” explained the researcher, underlining how this mechanism makes it more difficult to maintain the attention required by school and daily life. App design features, he added, reinforce impulsivity through instant gratification and continuous novelty, a mix that can impair working memory and executive control.
The study comes in a context in which, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 7 million American children and young people between the ages of 3 and 17 have already received a diagnosis of ADHD, with an incidence in males double that of females.
However, the authors recognize limitations. ADHD symptoms were parent-reported, not measured clinically, and the sample was predominantly composed of white adolescents from middle- to upper-income families. Furthermore, the annual surveys do not allow us to capture any short-term effects and, since it is an observational study, the researchers avoid talking about direct causality.
Nagata suggests that parents focus less on the total time spent online and more on specific signs: whether the child can stop when he wants, whether social media interferes with studying or social relationships, whether symptoms similar to those of an addiction appear, such as withdrawal and relapses. However, one aspect remains decisive, he recalled: “Parents’ screen use is a very strong predictor of how much time their children will spend in front of a screen”.
